by Marata Eros
I’m fiercely happy that he’s gone.
Puck crooks a finger beneath my chin, lifting it to capture my eyes and breaking my uneasy train of thought. “Just promise to text me when you leave her place.”
“I promise, but, Puck...”
“Yes, baby?”
I smile at his easy endearment. Loving it. But a few tough facts need to be conveyed before we part.
“I don’t know what happened to Kendra. What K suffered. I’m not ʻbabysittingʼ her. I’m checking to see if she needs to talk about stuff.” I shudder. “And fucking Storm—”
“What about Storm?” Puck asks, dropping his hand and frowning.
“He saved Kendra, but he’s been weird.”
“ʻWeirdʼ how?” Puck crosses his arms, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Well...” I twist my hands, feeling like I’m ratting the guy out after he helped my friend. Then I decide Puck and I are way past secrets, no matter how small. “K’s caught Storm kinda hanging around outside her apartment. He doesn’t take off until she turns off the lamp inside her bedroom.”
Puck’s smile is a slow burn. “That right?” he asks, eyebrows raised with a grin firmly in place.
I nod slowly, puzzled by his obvious amusement. “Yeah, that’s right.” Placing my hand on his muscled forearm, I quiz, “What?”
Puck gives a little shake to his head, taking my hand and kissing my palm again. “I think Storm might like Kendra.”
I shake my head emphatically. “No way, he’s spurned her at every opportunity. Doesn’t want anything from her. Hell, K’s tried to just tell him a simple thank you, and he won’t even accept that.”
Puck cups his chin, scrubbing his palm across the bristly surface. “Storm’s not my favorite dude.”
I knew that.
“He’s scary with women, and he hurt Candi while they were both undercover and neither knew about the other.”
Wow. Okay.
“But I dug up some dirt on him.” Puck waggles his brows.
I cross my arms. “Okay, I’m more sympathetic to Storm now.” I slowly raise my eyebrows.
Puck nods, lifting his hands in a don’t shoot me stance. “I wanted to know what man would stomp a woman in the ribs hard enough to fracture one. A guy that was FBI and part of our club? So shoot me.”
Whoa. My arms drop to my sides.
“Anyway,” Puck says, carding his fingers through his hair, “found out he’s a foster system boy. Like Noose and some of our girls.”
I make an impatient circular motion with my hand. I’m invested now. I’m especially so because Kendra’s involved.
“Come to find out, he was orphaned when he was a newborn. Parents were tornado chasers.”
I blink then whisper thoughtfully, “Storm.”
He nods. “Yeah. That’s actually his middle name.”
We stare at each other, sharing some of the same thoughts and probably ones that are pretty different.
“Anyway, Storm never knew his folks and had no living relatives. Tough life. Smart guy. Really fucked-up circumstances.”
Right. “He would be sort of compromised.” It’s easy for me to see that, being as how social work is my job. I know first-hand what a kid in the system goes through. I can’t even imagine how much worse it would have been back in my generation. Better contingencies are in place for kids now. They were non-existent for my parents’ generation and only vaguely in place for mine. “It would have been pretty rough going for Storm. And to have never been on the adoption circuit? That’s weird.” As a newborn, he should have been placed permanently.
“Don’t know,” Puck shrugs. “But I know enough about what Noose has told me that it’s a fucked-up racket. And Noose wasn’t in the system his entire life. Storm was.”
My mind spins with the possibilities. I don’t want Kendra with such a man. Guilt swamps me as I deal with the fact that Storm never had a chance, and how dare I relegate him to stereotypes and take away his chances with someone who might work for him.
Or for her.
But Kendra is a skinny tech nerd who doesn’t have the tools necessary to deal with the powder keg Storm might be. She’s an assertive firecracker who doesn’t take shit off anyone—that’s true. She’s also fragile and tender-hearted, though that doesn’t show easily to those who don’t know her.
I grab the sides of my head, and Puck pulls my hands gently away. “You can’t save everyone, Temp. Some people need to find their own way.”
Our eyes lock. “We did,” I acknowledge.
His instant smile is authentic. “Yes, we sure did.” Puck wraps his arms around me, kissing me deeply before he leaves me.
My body grows cold outside of his arms.
But my heart is warm with the knowledge of his love for me.
Chapter 30
Temp
I’m packing. I’ve got two Starbuck breves nestled in a tray in my left hand and a Glock 42 in the other.
Well, not really. The Glock is tucked in my small purse. The coffee is for Kendra. I’m determined to fatten her up. My already-thin friend has lost even more weight since our ordeal.
Kendra doesn’t know I’m coming. She’s been way quiet since we were rescued, and I don’t like the silence from her.
I kick the door shut on my VW, not bothering to lock it, and quickly regain my balance as I nearly upend the coffees.
Giving a satisfied nod that the car is mostly secure, I console myself with how nobody’s going to even look twice at my beater. Smiling to myself, I remember Puck’s grin as he surveyed both my awful vehicles.
One’s for transporting tykes, and the Rabbit is for getting my own ass from point A to point B. Cars are just something to move me. Why people get so excited about transportation is a head-scratcher.
I survey Kendra’s apartment building as I approach the stairway, noting that it’s so much like mine, it’s eerie.
I need to buy a place. Hell, at almost thirty, I’m still renting. Let’s face it, girl—you’re lazy.
A little snort escapes me. So true. I jog up the stairs, the latest beating of bruises letting me know they’re still there and healing.
God. I’ll never forget Puck’s eyes when they roamed my body when we were together this last time.
It was clear from his expression that he wanted to kill all those fuckers again. But what’s done is done. Ritchie’s dead.
And I’m alive—and carrying a life. Puck’s baby.
I’ll count myself fortunate, and that’s what I’m going to try and pound into Kendra’s head. No matter what happened and what either of us went through, we came out the other side.
If I can get her to talk to me. The aftermath has been filled with my tales and the revelation of my pregnancy. Kendra’s ordeal has taken second stage. And that isn’t right. I’m here to correct that now.
I reach the top flight of steps and turn to her door, with my right hand prepped to knock and gripping the textured recycled coffee tray in my left.
But the door is standing open.
A man stands just inside the open doorway, his arm snaked around Kendra’s throat. “Beat it, bitch. This is between me and her.”
It’s that guy—the one who tried to mess me up in the parking lot the night I got hammered at Kendra’s.
All this goes through my head in an instant.
I chuck the coffee at his face, and Kendra screams, ducking.
I go in swinging, nailing him with the tried and true—kicking him in the nuts.
He goes down with a tortured howl.
I open my purse as Kendra staggers over to me and drops to her knees. I grab my pistol, kicking off the safety, and level at him as he rolls around on the floor, clutching his privates.
“Stay there,” I holler, thinking about my baby, Kendra—my fucked up life where there’s a dude jumping out of a jack-in-the-box every five seconds to beat on me and apparently, my friend.
“Temp,” Kendra moans from the floor, hanging on to my kne
es for dear life.
I flick my eyes to her for just a second. One. Second.
And the fucker is just there, standing in front of me. Fuck, must have been a glancing blow, I have time to think.
He wraps his hand on the pistol, clearly preparing to jerk it out of my hand.
I fire.
The action is more reflex than actual intent. But the outcome is the same. The bullet takes out his hand and the top of his head.
Oh my God.
Blowback from his brains, blood, and skull slam into my face, and I want to scream. But opening my mouth means ingesting that.
Instead of screaming, I fall on my ass, narrowly missing a shrieking Kendra in the process.
About that time, Puck walks in.
Puck
Perry and I pass each other as I fly out of my driveway like my ass is on fire.
Barely giving him a nod, I motor to Kendra’s. That’s where I’ll find Temp.
I hope.
Flooring it, I blast dangerously fast on the Fat Boy cruiser, a bumpy-ass ride at the best of times.
This time, it’s nothing but a gut juggler as I scream down the road—no helmet and no cut. Nothing but my ass on the seat and the wind blasting my hair.
It’s enough time for my mind to fill in blanks I don’t want it to.
Relief floods me when I catch sight of her crappy Rabbit parked sideways in one of the stalls.
Gripping the handles, I roll up beside her VW, kick off the engine, and ease the weight of the bike onto the stand in a single, familiar move before hopping off.
I sprint to the stairs just as a muffled report from a fired weapon cracks through the stillness of the strange acoustics of the stairwell.
Instinctively, I duck.
Then I freak the fuck out. Temp.
Gooseflesh marches over my skin in a disorderly wave of primal fear, and I charge the steps.
Forgetting twenty years of police protocol, I swing around the top rail like a monkey on meth.
All I see is Temp on the ground, half on top of Kendra, with a gun in one hand and her face covered in bits of brains and blood.
A quick glance tells me that the attacker is good and dead, half his worthless head blown off.
Fingers litter the apartment floor like discarded hot dog parts.
Holy fuck. What the hell happened? I have time to think before I’m kneeling beside the women.
My hand covers the one that holds the gun, carefully hitting the safety on the Glock as I gently scoop it from Temp's icy fingers and set it on the floor away from us.
Dragging a shocky Temp into my arms, I push bloody hair out of her face.
I scan her for new injuries and don’t see anything. “Baby, talk to me.”
Kendra stares at the ceiling as Temp’s wide aqua eyes find mine.
I’m riveted by a small shard of skull lodged just underneath and dangerously near one turquoise eye.
Just then, Storm rounds the corner, grabbing the door threshold. “Hey, fucknuts...” His bright hazel eyes scurry over the carnage. “Holy Christ,” he whisper-breathes.
Yeah, that about sums it up.
Temp flinches when I pluck the sliver of skull from beneath her eye.
“Puck,” she whispers, “I think I killed that guy.”
Our eyes lock. She certainly had.
Storm grunts. “Yup. Dead as fuck.” His eyes search the room for anyone else, then his attention turns back to me. “Just the one buffoon then?”
We look at the cooling corpse.
“Appears that way.”
Storm finally sees Kendra and his face goes instantly from hard self-possession to alarm.
He strides to where we sit, approximately in the center of the small living room. Sleek glass-topped low tables and what looks like a comfortable espresso-colored couch are covered in blood and bits of gore.
“Shit, she’s in shock,” he murmurs, picking up Kendra, who’s a terrible shade of chalky white.
“No,” she says sluggishly, attempting to push at Storm.
He bats her hand away. “Don’t, tootz, let me get a look at you.” He glares down at her.
Big tears crawl from the corners of her eyes. “Please don’t.”
Temp and I look at Kendra.
“Don’t what?” Storm says loudly, eyes flashing. “Don’t hold you? Don’t get you the fuck outta here and maybe in a hospital? Don’t fucking give a shit like you’ve been making me do for weeks now? Is that the ʻdon’tʼ we’re talkinʼ about?”
I blink. Who the hell jacked Storm’s body? What in the hell is he shouting about? “Hey, man, lay off—we don’t know what brainless over there did before Temp showed up.”
Storm bares his teeth at Kendra, and she shivers, tucking her head against his chest.
“Fuck!” he bellows at the ceiling. “I don’t need bitches!”
“Just this one, I guess,” I needlessly point out.
“Shut up, Puck!”
I close my mouth, but it’s not without a great effort as a smile tries to seep into my normally closed expression.
Carrying Kendra, Storm strides over to the dead body and kicks what’s left of the head.
Comically, the head shoots against the wall with a thunk and more brains blast out, creating a churned tomato soup look on the wall.
Temp’s eyes widen, and she moves off my lap, narrowly missing more blood as she turns, throwing up in what is now a screwed-six-ways-to-Sunday crime scene.
Storm gives a decisive nod. “There. That makes me feel better.” Apparently, he doesn’t notice he’s absently stroking Kendra’s dark-blond hair over and over. “He’s not going to do a Lazarus after that one.”
No. Definitely not.
I draw Temp’s hair back so she doesn’t get vomit in it as Storm challenges me with his gaze. Daring me to call him out on his erratic, out-of-character behavior.
In the end, I think it’s Kendra who’s had enough.
“I’ll call Perry,” I say. “Get this little disaster cataloged.”
“Don’t let them take me,” Kendra whispers, her small fingers fisting Storm’s cut, which has a bunch of drying tears and snot on it. Not that Storm apparently cares. A fucking miracle.
“Nope. Nobody fucking takes you anywhere that I don’t have eyes on,” he says.
“Okay,” she replies in a small voice.
I carry Temp to the bathroom, where we wash her face, and I set my eyes on my future wife. There’s no doubt that I’m going to make Charlotte Temperance mine.
Permanently.
He’s brave enough to shoot an adversary. Smart enough to carry a gun. Discerning enough to know who the good guy is.
I tap out a text to Perry. He’ll send detectives.
And I’ll have a lot to answer to, and no way to help my brothers get their property.
Not when my own is so threatened.
Storm
It’s probably in that moment that the thing I said would never fucking happen to me, did.
I care about someone other than my own damn hide. If I’m honest with myself, the feels began way before this current fucked-up thing I just walked into. Like when I saw a helpless female bleeding and almost raped in a fortress built for drugging women.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a female lover. Women have vaginas, and I do love me some of that. Served with a side of violence. In fact, that’s my preference. Has been since I started getting a hard-on in middle school.
But somehow, I began seeing Kendra as a person who needed saving, instead of a woman who needed a rough fucking.
When did that particular slice of bullshit happen? When did my mental cogs get all gunked up with emotional uncertainty?
Now I’m first-class fucked.
Cops are crawling all over the crime scene, and Puck’s running interference because I booted that dead fucker’s head like I was making a soccer field goal.
My hands fist. How dare that mofo touch Kendra. And therein lies the real problem.
Why do I give a shit if he touches her? She’s a bitch.
She’s one of them.
The female collective who abandon and tantalize without offering anything else.
Why is Kendra different?
I don’t know. And that’s the worst part. Right now, Kendra’s not talking to anyone. We don’t know what happened before Temp showed up and blew the loser away.
A cop tried to take her so a paramedic could check her out, and Kendra screamed, hysterical about being taken from me.
The cop tried to reason with her.
I told him to fuck off.
Oh yes, I’m making all kinds of friends with the boys in blue.
Not.
Puck rolled his eyes at our exchange. “A little help, Storm.”
Sorry, I said.
Now I sit perched on the only part of the couch free of blood and brains and watch the circus.
When what I really want to do is look at Kendra.
Not that I can see her. Her tiny hands are gripping my shirt, and her face is wedged between my bicep and chest.
I’ve got to pee like a Russian Race Horse. “Gotta take a piss,” I mutter, shaking her a little.
Her wide pale-brown eyes find mine, and I can’t speak. I try to look away from them.
Can’t.
“Okay,” she says and begins to crawl off my lap. One hand stays attached to my cut.
“Listen,” I bark then rein it back some when she flinches. “I can’t piss when you’re hanging on to me.” My eyebrows jerk to my hairline.
Kendra nods her head. “Okay, can I wait outside the bathroom door?” Her nervous gaze takes in the general chaos—the cops everywhere, the blood, the tape—then return to mine.
I nod slowly. “You could, but no one here is going to hurt you. Temp and Puck are here. You know this.”
Kendra looks around again.
The sound of the zipper pulling on the body bag widens her eyes, and they return to me. She takes a hard swallow and nods. “Yeah.”
Fuck. I stand. Taking her by the hand, I tow her behind me to the bathroom.
“Nice job on fucking up the scene,” a cop says as he walks by me.
With my free hand, I shove him into the wall with everything I have.
He bounces off, turning in a circle, and barely regains his balance.